


I Do

by TheKnightOfHeart



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Corpse Bride (2005) Fusion, Gay Keith (Voltron), M/M, also dw the ending's gonna be WAYYYY different if i make this into a thing, basically it's just the forest scene when they first meet, i removed the kallura tag cause it's endgame klance and allura's not here for that het shit, keith is victor, lance is emily, no sad lance (at least not forever hewhew), very small hints but it's there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 02:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20789015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheKnightOfHeart/pseuds/TheKnightOfHeart
Summary: Keith doesn't want to be married, but he has no choice. After running off into the woods to collect himself, he practices his vows and ends up putting a ring on a weirdly-shaped root. Only, it's a corpse. And it says "I do".





	I Do

“Young Master Kogane, I must insist that you do not step back into this church until you have memorized your vows,” Pastor Coran sighed.

The words had been spoken kindly enough, but Keith couldn’t help the sting of shame he felt as he ran through the door. He could hear his guardians’ protests and seen the pitying look on Allura’s face, but he didn’t care right now. Honestly, damn all of them! Keith wanted to be alone.

He was forced to slow a few minutes later when he found himself on the edge of the woods surrounding the town he was forced to call home. The uneven ground and many snagging branches threatened to make him trip or tear up his stupid suit. As much as Keith wouldn’t mind showing up to his house later covered in dirt and wearing a ruined wedding suit, he knew his guardians might very well kill him. They were probably already livid at his sudden departure; he didn’t want to test their patience even more and get himself locked in his room without his drawing supplies or books.

He grumbled to himself and kicked some fallen leaves as he walked deeper into the forest. It was getting dark and very chilly, but Keith simply stuffed his hands into his too-small trouser pockets and glared at his surroundings like the heat of his anger alone would be enough to cheer him up.

He knew he was being angry for really no reason. “Why am I even complaining?” he asked himself bitterly. “Marrying some random woman to get her fortune is hardly the worst thing the Summers could ask me to do for them. It’s the least I could do when they took me in all those years ago. And the vows aren’t all that hard.”

He slowed down slightly and took his right hand out of his pocket. “With this hand… I will take your wine,” he tried. He scowled almost immediately. “Okay, no, that’s not it.”

He thought for a while and continued walking. “With this hand… I will cup your-- Maybe I won’t finish that one,” he muttered to himself, blushing.

He barely knew where he was, now. The last time he had been this deep in the woods, he had been one of two attendees to his father’s funeral. He tried to ignore the crows watching him from the dead tree branches and gave the graveyard a wide berth. He didn’t want to talk to a tombstone today.

“With this candle, I will… almost set the tablecloth on fire,” Keith grumbled as he took a seat on a fallen tree trunk. He spared no thought to the wet spot that was probably being left on his trousers by the snow underneath and curled up as much as he could. “This is ridiculous.”

He sat for a few minutes, trying in vain to warm his fingers by blowing on them. When it became clear that wouldn’t be enough, he stood. He looked at the gnarled, ancient-looking tree nearby and smiled ruefully at him. With its long, spindly branches and roots, the tree almost looked like a strange collection of human hands and fingers.

He would try one more time to get the vows right, and then he would go home and face the consequences of his tantrum. His guardians would no doubt give him hell and punish him, but Keith had a secret stash of drawing supplies under his bed to keep himself occupied while he was under house arrest. It would have to do until he could move out of the Summers’ house entirely and into his own place where he would never have to worry about being grounded ever again.

His new place. That he would have to share with Allura. Because they were getting married.

He sighed. “It could be worse,” he reminded himself quietly. “At least Allura’s got a brain in her head. I could be marrying a woman who doesn’t know her right from her left.”

He stepped closer to the tree and pulled the wedding ring from his pocket. “With this hand… I will lift your sorrows,” he recited hesitantly. “Your cup will never empty, for I will be your wine.”

Yes, this sounded familiar. He smirked a little and tossed the ring into the air. He underestimated the clumsiness of his numb fingers, though, and fumbled with it for a moment before it inevitably fell to the ground. Cursing, he knelt down to pick it up.

A strange root formation caught his eye right as his fingers brushed the band of gold. It was shaped almost _exactly_ like a skeletal hand, but it was the same color as the tree and sticking out of the ground. It was a bit freaky, but he could use it.

Clearing his throat, he picked up a stray twig lying near him and mimed lighting a candle. “With this candle, I will light your way in darkness.” He tossed it over his shoulder and focused his attention on the wedding ring again. “With this ring…”

He hesitated for a few moments. Did he really want this? He would probably never fall in love with Allura, and though he was okay with spending the rest of his days in a loveless marriage as long as Allura wasn’t totally unbearable, would _she?_ Women often fantasized about love, or so Keith was told. Did Allura expect him to sweep her off her feet? He wouldn’t be able to deliver, he was sure.

But on the other hand, the Summers would never forgive him if he refused to go through with the marriage. They had never been terribly fond of him, and if their only heir refused to marry who they wanted, they might very well disown him and adopt another, more capable son. Or maybe they would finally get lucky and bear one of their own, one who had the same genetics and family tree. They would have no need of Keith anymore, and he would be all alone again.

Keith swallowed and took a deep breath. Technically speaking, he had a choice, but it wasn’t much of one. “With this ring,” he stammered, gingerly reaching out for the skeleton-like root. “With this ring, I ask you… I ask you to be mine.”

Before he could talk himself out of it, he slid the ring onto what would be the root’s index finger if it was actually a hand. He stared at it for a few seconds, wondering what he should do now, when suddenly the wind began to pick up.

Keith shivered violently as the cold seemed to slip right through his stuffy, thick suit and jab at his exposed skin like tiny razors. Cursing, he stood and looked around. Unfamiliar as he was with this part of the woods, he wasn’t quite sure what direction he had to go to get back to town. Hopefully, though, he hadn’t walked as far as he’d thought. He didn’t want to add to tomorrow’s misery by getting frostbite or catching a cold.

He turned to look back down at the root wearing his wedding band and started. It may have just been a trick of the wind, but Keith could’ve sworn he saw the “fingers” of the root twitch. Kneeling down, he slowly stretched out a hand towards the root.

There was no doubt about it this time: the root suddenly shot forward and grabbed his wrist. Keith yelped and immediately tried to free himself, but the root’s grip was like an iron fetter. The only thing keeping him from being pulled into the ground by the skeletal hand - and it was a hand, there was no denying it now - was his legs bracing himself against the ground and pulling away with all his might.

Finally, something snapped, and Keith tumbled backwards. The hand, as well as a forearm, was still attached to his wrist, but at least it wasn’t trying to pull him into the ground anymore. He shook his arm frantically and managed to send the arm flying up into the air. It landed off a few feet to the left of him as he scrambled to his feet and looked back at the base of the gnarled tree.

The ground rumbled and shook as the hole the arm came from began to distend and crack open further. Another arm, this time covered in ice-cold flesh, burst out of the ground in a shower of dirt clumps, and whatever it was attached to began to claw its way up. Keith stood, frozen, as a head emerged, and then a whole body from the freshly-made hole.

It was a human figure, but there was no way the thing was actually alive. Most of the creature was covered in skin, but it had turned blue and was missing from places, like its left arm and part of its torso and its right leg. The broad shoulders, flat chest, and narrow hips suggested it was male, and it was wearing what appeared to be a suit, much like Keith’s own, but tattered in places and a dirty white. A veil covered its face, connected to a circlet made of dead flowers, but as Keith watched, the creature used its remaining hand to pull it back.

The face of a boy not much older than Keith himself stared down at him with wide eyes. “I do,” the corpse whispered in a voice that sounded very alive and all the more terrifying for it.

Keith screamed and began to run as fast as he could in the opposite direction. He couldn’t hear the corpse following him over the sound of his terrified panting, but when he tripped over a root and nearly fell face-first into a tombstone, the corpse was quick to appear behind him. It was walking slowly, but each one of its steps seemed to be carry it triple the length of any normal human. Keith gasped and got up as quickly as he could.

The forest itself seemed to be out for him. He managed to make it through the graveyard without tripping any more, but the creek nearby had begun to freeze and forced him to slow down or risk slipping and falling into it. The corpse, when Keith dared to look back, seemed to glide right over it, of course. He would’ve laughed incredulously if not for the fact that he did not feel like laughing right now and even if he did, he had barely any breath left in his lungs to do so.

The edge of the woods finally came into view, along with the bridge leading into town and the church he’d run out of just a few hours ago. He’d never felt so happy to see the familiar sight, but before he could run out of the tree line, a thicket of tree branches snagged his suit and seemed to almost hold him back. He flailed for a few moments and managed to get out, but not before a few chunks of his suit were left behind. He didn’t care, though, as long as he was finally out of the woods and almost into town.

He slowed down slightly when he reached the bridge and looked back, gasping for breath. A few seconds passed, but no gastly, blue-tinted body emerged from the dark. He leaned back against the cold stone of the bridge and exhaled shakily. He was not one to get easily scared, but that had been the most terrifying experience of his life, by far. In all honesty, he was surprised his trousers were still unsoiled by anything other than dirt and snow.

Keith backed up a few steps, wary of turning his back on the woods, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it back to town backwards. Figuring he’d caught his breath enough to run the rest of the way, he turned around and almost ran right into the corpse.

He stumbled back immediately, but the undead creature stepped forward quickly and sealed off his escape routes. His hips quickly bumped against the railing of the bridge, and he could do little more than flinch when the creature reached out with its mismatched hands - when had it gotten the skeleton one back? - and smiled. A huge flock of crows flew overhead, cawing loudly and almost drowning out the corpse’s words.

“You may now kiss the groom,” it declared gleefully and began to lean forward.

Keith’s vision began to go black at the edges, and before he could feel the corpse’s lips on his, he fainted.

**Author's Note:**

> whoops, only a completely unrelated one-shot!
> 
> for those of you who don't know: i have a much longer fic based on "to all the boys i've loved before" that i've been working on for what must be almost a year now?? it's maybe only one or two chapters away from being done, and instead of working on THAT like a normal person would, i watched corpse bride and klance-ified it.
> 
> side note: i wanted to put lance in a dress (and yes, though i don't say it, it's definitely lance) but i figured it'd just kinda be weird. the movie's supposed to take place in victorian england (at least, it's very obviously inspired by an older time period) and it would make no sense for a man to be in a wedding dress. then again, i guess it wouldn't make sense for two men to be allowed to get married. but fuck gender roles and homophobia, am i right lads?
> 
> anyways, if you want me to make this into a series of oneshots instead of just this one stand-alone one, lemme know! any comments or kudos are also appreciated, and if you see an error, don't be afraid to tell me! i wrote this in under two hours and didn't edit it. love you guys!! uwu <3


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